Typically, the hierarchy is depicted in the form of a pyramid although Maslow was not himself responsible for the iconic diagram. The hierarchy of needs developed by Maslow is one of his most enduring contributions to psychology. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an idea in psychology proposed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow in his paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in the journal Psychological Review.
These needs are related to each other in a hierarchy of prepotency or strength beginning with the physiological needs that are the most prepotent of all. If the physiological needs are fulfilled, a new set of safety needs emerges. The next need is esteem, and finally self-actualization. Maslow also coined the term " metamotivation " to describe the motivation of people who go beyond the scope of basic needs and strive for constant betterment. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid, with the largest, most fundamental needs at the bottom, and the need for self-actualization and transcendence at the top.
However, Maslow himself never created a pyramid to represent the hierarchy of needs. The most fundamental four layers of the pyramid contain what Maslow called "deficiency needs" or "d-needs": esteem, friendship and love, security, and physical needs. If these "deficiency needs" are not met โ except for the most fundamental physiological need โ there may not be a physical indication, but the individual will feel anxious and tense. Deprivation is what causes deficiency, so when one has unmet needs, this motivates them to fulfill what they are being denied.
The human brain is a complex system and has parallel processes running at the same time, thus many different motivations from various levels of Maslow's hierarchy can occur at the same time. Maslow spoke clearly about these levels and their satisfaction in terms such as "relative", "general", and "primarily". Instead of stating that the individual focuses on a certain need at any given time, Maslow stated that a certain need "dominates" the human organism.
In contrast to the well-known pyramid, a number of alternative schematic illustrations of the hierachy of needs have been developed. One of the earliest, in , shows a more dynamic hierarchy in terms of 'waves' of different needs overlapping at the same time. Other schematic illustrations of the hierarchy use overlapping triangles to depict the interaction of the different needs. One such updated hierarchy proposes that self-actualization is removed from its privileged place atop the pyramid because it is largely subsumed within status esteem and mating-related motives in the new framework.
